IIT Gandhinagar: 15 Years of ExcellenceNews


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PHD PROGRAMMES


IIT Gandhinagar is looking for bright and dedicated young scholars interested in research to join us as Ph.D. scholars.

Currently, we offer Ph.D. programme in Biological Sciences and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Computer Science and Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Earth Sciences, Earth Systems Science, Archaeological Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Humanities & Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Materials Engineering, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics.

Prospective students satisfying the eligibility criteria are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the research areas of our faculty members for suitable match of interest.

Important Dates

  • September 13, 2024

    Application Opens

    October 17, 2024 by 5:00 PM (IST)

    Application Deadline

    October 24-26, 2024

    Announcement of the Shortlisted Candidates (tentative)

    November 01-20, 2024

    Written test and/or interview


Research overview | List of Scholars | PhD — Find out more


  • Eligibility Criteria

    Eligibility Criteria


    At least 55% marks (50% marks for SC/ST/PD) or 5.5 CPI (5.0 CPI for SC/ST/PD) in M.A./M.Sc./B.Tech./MTech./BS (IISc, IISER)/BS-MS (IISER) or in equivalent qualifying degree in appropriate branches.
    Above mentioned eligibility criteria is minimum at Institute level. The department-wise eligibility criteria can be found here. The departments may also use higher cut-off levels for shortlisting besides giving due consideration to the way questions are answered in the application form. Candidates belonging to SC/ST/PD categories would be eligible for relaxations, as per norms, in the selection criteria.

    The departments may also use higher cut off levels for shortlisting. Merely meeting the minimum eligibility criteria will not guarantee the shortlisting and/or admission.

  • Admission Categories

    Admission Categories


    Regular(RR): Fulltime residential research candidate.

    Continuing Doctoral Programme (CDP):
    • Candidates admitted to the PhD programme under the CDP category can directly join the PhD programme.
    • The residency requirement for the candidates will be the time required to do the course work offered offline. Further, the candidates are encouraged to spend at least two weeks every semester at IITGN to ensure steady progress in their PhD research work.
    • The curricular requirements will be the same as that of a regular PhD programme.

  • Financial Support

    Financial Support


    Students joining the Ph.D. program as regulars (RR) may be considered for the Institute Fellowship (subjected to availability of fund) based on the following norms:

    1. Candidates with qualifications in any of the points (a-f) mentioned below are eligible for a monthly fellowship of Rs. 37,000/-.
      • a). Post Graduate Degree in Basic Science with NET/GATE Qualification or Graduate Degree in Professional Courses (B.Tech/B.E.) with NET/GATE Qualification or Postgraduate Degree in Professional Courses (M.Tech/M.E. etc)
      • b). BTech degree from a CFTI (Centrally Funded Technical Institute) with CPI at least 8.0 (on a scale of 10).
      • c). MSc/MA from IITs with CPI at least 8.0 (on a scale of 10)
      • d). BS from IISc with CPI at least 6.4 (on a scale of 8)
      • e). BS-MS from IISERs with CPI at least 8.0 (on a scale of 10)
      • f). BS from IISERs with CPI at least 8.0 (on a scale of 10)
    2. After successful completion of two years in a regular Ph.D. programme, a Ph.D. candidate may be eligible for a monthly fellowship of Rs. 42,000/-.

    Find Out More

    Explore details about the various opportunities for scholarships and awards.

  • Admission Procedure

    Admission Procedure


    Admission is generally offered on the basis of an interview, which is supplemented by a written test if necessary. The Institute will invite a limited number of candidates for a written test and/or interview based on the academic records, statement of purpose, etc. The final selection will be mainly based on academic credentials, written test and/or interview.

    The mode (offline/online) and dates for the written test (if any) and interview will be communicated to the shortlisted candidates by their respective departments.

    In addition to the announced admission cycles with prescribed deadline of application, the Institute also considers applications any time of the year in case of exceptional candidates. Based on the qualifications of the candidates and the need of the discipline concerned, applications received are processed through duly constituted selection committees at regular intervals.

  • Important Dates

    Application Procedure


    All applications must be submitted online. If you are applying for more than one discipline, please submit a separate application for each discipline. After successful submission of the application form, you will receive an application number and a link to download the application form. Please save the application form. You need to furnish hardcopy of the application form and self attested copies of all the relevant documents at the time of interview. Incomplete applications will be rejected

    Application Fees: Rs. 150/- (SC/ST/PD Category), Rs. 300/- (Others)
    You NEED NOT send the hard-copy of the application form.

    Important Dates

    Application Deadline - October 17, 2024 by 5:00 PM (IST)
    Announcement of the Shortlisted Candidates - October 24- October 26 2024 (tentative)
    Written Examinations/Interviews - November 1- November 20 2024 (tentative)

  • Focus Areas
    • Biological Sciences and Engineering

      1. DNA Regulatory Mechanisms
      2. Ultrasound (Imaging, Diagnostics, and Ultrasound-mediated therapy)
      3. Chemical and Biomolecular Crystallography
      4. Computational Biology, Systems Biology
      5. Plant biology (Development, Reproduction, Cell-cell Signaling, Biotechnology)
      6. Drug Delivery Technologies
      7. Biomaterials (Hydrogels and Implants) and Tissue Engineering
      8. Neuroscience
      9. Peptide Engineering

    • Chemical Engineering

      1.Heterogeneous catalysis, Catalyst synthesis, Multiphase reactions
      2. Functional materials (CO2 capture, adsorbents), Surface Engineering and Superhydrophobic surfaces,
      3. Pharmaceutical Engineering and Drug Delivery, Biomaterials, Stimuli-responsive hydrogels, nano-drug suspensions, microbubbles for biomedical applications such as drug delivery and ultrasonic imaging,
      4. Wastewater treatment, Drinking water
      5. Powder Technology, Particulate matter and aerosols,
      6. Polymer Processing, Polymer Gels, Polymer Blends, Shape memory polymers, Smart Polymeric Materials, Polymer Ionic Liquids, Polymer nanocomposites
      7. Process Engineering, Control, and Optimization, Cyber-Physical Systems for Industrial Manufacturing and Buildings, Machine Learning and Data Science,
      8. Colloids and Interfaces, Rheology,
      9. Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Molecular simulations, Protein aggregation and protein folding, Biomolecular Simulations,molecular dynamic simulations for aqueous solutions of drug molecules,
      10. Supercapacitors and other energy storage devices,
      11. Bio-printing, 3D printing,
      12. Crystallization of pharmaceuticals, polymorphic behavior of pharmaceuticals,
      13. Flow and transport in porous media, Hydrodynamic instability,
      14. Building Energy Management, Indoor air quality, atmospheric transport and transformation of pollutants,
      15.Synthetic biology, protein engineering
      16. Nanotechnology, Hybrid nanomaterials, and biomolecules for agricultural applications.

    • Chemistry

      1. Machine learning potentials in material simulations;  electronic structure and Delta-ML models for organic solar cells and LEDs
      2. Molecular simulations to explore interactions at the graphene aqueous interface;  Development of molecular simulations protocols to study phytochemicals from Indian Traditional Medicines;  Investigating the role of carbohydrates in bio-molecular systems using molecular simulations.
      3. Catalysis for CO2 conversion to fuel, carbon capture and utilization, green hydrogen, electrochemistry, Materials chemistry"
      4. Electrochemical Reduction of CO2; Molecular electrocatalysis for nitrogen to ammonia interconversion,
      5. Photocatalysis with gold nanoparticles, sunlight to hydrogen production, Single-particle spectroscopy, plasmonics;
      6. Development of novel organocatalysts, Application of organocatalysis to the asymmetric synthesis of bioactive molecules;
      7. Chemical Biology, Cancer therapeutics, Drug Discovery,
      8. Synthesis of Fluorescent dyes, polymers, and bioimaging,
      9. Adsorptive materials, biomass-inorganic nanocomposites, rare earth elements and N-harvesting,
      10.Small molecule activation, Catalysis with main group compounds, Low-valent main group compounds, Dinitrogen and carbon dioxide fixation using 3d-transition metal complexes
      11. Chemical biology of organelles, small molecule and nanoscale material development for targeting organelles in cancer.
      12. Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and design of novel photo redox catalysts for organic transformations

    • Civil Engineering

      1. Geotechnical Engineering: Dynamic behavior of soils, soil liquefaction, suction and collapse of unsaturated soils, constitutive modeling of soils, geotechnical earthquake engineering, geosynthetics
      2. Water Resources Engineering: Machine learning architectures for hydrological sciences, resilience of urban water distribution systems, land surface hydrologic modeling, remote sensing applications in hydrology, climate change impacts and risk assessment on water resources, dam breach and levee breach hydraulics, integrated urban water management, blockage/leak detection in pipes, modeling of floods and droughts
      3. Structural Engineering: Fire engineering, tall structures, performance-based earthquake engineering of structures, probabilistic seismic hazard and ground motion characterization, seismic isolation of nuclear structures, structural health assessment and monitoring, resilience of infrastructure, computational solid mechanics, 3D concrete printing, topology optimization, multiscale material modeling, blast engineering
      4. Environmental Engineering: Aerosols and air quality, indoor air quality, pollution mitigation
      5. Transportation Engineering: Mechanistic modeling of flexible and rigid pavements, pavement-environment interaction, urban sustainability, AI/ML applications in transportation engineering
      6. Construction Materials: Sustainable building materials, high-performance concrete, life cycle assessment, characterization techniques

    • Cognitive and Brain Science

      1. Learning, Memory
      2. Motor Control, Movement Disorders, Rehabilitation, Visuo-motor control and processing,
      3. Emotion
      4. Attentional selection and control,
      5. Visual Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Multlingual Cognition,
      6. Robotics, Human Robot Interaction,
      7. Decision Making,
      8. Tactile Hallucinations in Schizophrenia
      9. Brain Connectivity,
      10. Tactile Perception,
      11. Bilingual Processing and Mental Lexicon,
      12. Language Acquisition
      13. Multisensory Perception,
      14. Curiosity
      15. Human-computer interaction and Brain-Computer interface

    • Computer Science and Engineering

      1. Theoretical computer science, Computational complexity, Algebra and computation, Algorithms;
      2. Machine learning; Game theory;
      3. Formal methods and verification;
      4. Quantum machine learning, Natural language Processing, Large Language Modelling;
      5. Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Deep Learning Applications for Vision and Graphics;
      6. Human-computer interaction, Brain-computer interface, Eye-tracking, Explainable AI, Medical imaging, Artificial intelligence of things, eHealth;
      7. Software Engineering using Generative AI, Empirical Software Engineering, Software Testing, Mining Software Repositories;
      8. System security, Web security, Usable privacy and security; 
      9.  AI hardware design, Processor design and validation, Hardware Security, AI for Hardware Design and Test.
      10. Graph neural networks, GNNs for citywide simulation.
      11. Computer Networks, Network Security, Distributed Systems, Cloud computing and Computer Architecture

    • Earth Sciences

      1. Climate Change, Water Resources,
      2. Solid Earth, Mineralogy and Mineral Physics, High Pressure Metamorphism,
      3. Geothermal Energy, Carbonate Depositional Systems, Sea level change
      4. Geophysics, Geodynamic Modelling, Statistical Seismology, Numerical modeling of landscapes,
      5. River Science, Earth Surface Processes, tectonic geomorphology
      6. Natural Hazards and risk, Remote sensing & GIS,
      7. Environmental Archaeology, Geoarchaeology,
      8. Archaeology, Ceramic Petrology, Ancient Technology,
      9. Mircopalaeontology and Palaeoclimate

    • Electrical Engineering

      1. Nanoelectronics, Nanotechnology, Advanced Semiconductor Devices, Emerging Memories, High-Frequency Analog Circuit Design, Multi-scale modeling, Analog IC Design, Semiconductor device and process modeling, Power Management IC Design
      2. VLSI Design, Computing in Memory for ML, AI Hardware, Computer Architecture
      3. Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) Design, IoT electronic system design
      4. Biomedical Signal Processing, Human Computer Interaction
      5. Computer Vision, Image and Video Processing, Computer Graphics, Deep Learning
      6. Adaptive Signal Processing, Array Signal Processing, Audio and Speech Signal Processing
      7. Control Systems, Estimation Theory
      8. Power Systems and Smart Grid
      9. Electrical Machines and Power Electronics
      10. Smart power electronics for Renewable Energy Integration and Electric Vehicles
      11. Photonic Sensors, Fibre-optics, Nanophotonics, Electromagnetic Metamaterials, Computational Electromagnetics
      12. Next-generation ultrasound imaging and therapy

    • Humanities and Social Sciences

      1. Academic Writing and Literacy, Second Language Acquisition, English for Academic Purposes. Linguistic Anthropology;
      2. Social History of Bengal and British Assam
      3. Northeast India in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries;
      4. Indian Writing in English, Representation of Women in Indian English along with Bengali literature, Indian Diasporic Literature in English;
      5. Ancient Indian Technologies, Ethnoarchaeology, Experimental Archaeology, Northeast Indian Archaeology, Indigenous Archaeology, Repatriation and Archaeometallurgy;
      6. Archaeozoology and Environmental Archaeology
      7. Education, Educational Technology, Teacher Professional Development, Learning Sciences
      8. Psychoanalysis
      9. Continental Philosophy
      10. Global Modernist Studies

    • Materials Engineering

      1. Antimicrobial polymers, Biocomposites, Nanoparticles for drug delivery
      2. Quantum materials and devices: synthesis, structure-property correlations, and device fabrication.
      3. Thin Film Fabrication, (Opto)electronic materials,Thermal barrier/chemical/oxidation-resistant coating development
      4. Medium entropy alloys-Microstructure design and mechanical property characterization
      5. Alloy design, Co-,Fe-,Al-, Cu-based alloys and high entropy alloys, deformation mechanism, hydrogen embrittlement
      6. Tribology of 2D materials, Surface Wetability, Ceramic Membranes
      7. Biomaterials, Environmental Application of Materials, Nanomaterials, nanomedicine
      8. Defect engineering, material design for novel applications, nanometer length scale structure-property measurments

    • Mathematics

      1. Partial Differential Equations;
      2. Number Theory;
      3. Numerical Analysis

    • Mechanical Engineering

      1. Thermofluids: Fluid Mechanics and Heat transfer, Compressible flows, Turbulence, Combustion and propulsion, Fuel cells, Complex Fluids, Porous media, Boiling, Condensation and frosting.
      2. Robotics and Dynamics Systems: Control systems, Robotics, Nonlinear dynamics and wave propagation
      3. Theoretical and Applied Mechanics: Material Mechanics, Biomechanics, Fracture mechanics, Damage Mechanics, Beams, Composites

    • Physics


      1. High Energy Particle Physics Theory: Flavor physics, Dark Matter
      2. Theoretical High Energy Physics: LHC and future collider studies, model building and phenomenology.
      3. Renewable energy harvesting, optoelectronic, photoelectrochemical and sensing applications of functional materials and composites
      4. Modelling of nanomagnetic/spintronic devices
      5. Experimental Active Matter Physics
      6. Gravitational Wave Astronomy
      7.2D Materials and heterostructures, Quantum materials, Spintronics, Desalination and Fuel cell membranes, Nanoscale Transport

  • PMRF

    Prime Minister's Research Fellowship


    The Prime Minister's Research Fellows (PMRF) Scheme has been designed for improving the quality of research in various higher educational institutions in the country. With attractive fellowships, the scheme seeks to attract the best talent into research thereby realizing the vision of development through innovation. The scheme was announced in the Budget 2018-19. The institutes which can offer PMRF include all the IITs, all the IISERs, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and some of the top Central Universities/NITs that offer science and/or technology degrees. The candidates will be selected through a rigorous selection process and their performance will be reviewed suitably through a national convention time to time. Kindly visit https://iitgn.ac.in/pmrf for more details about PMRF.